A Hundred Faults

As we strive every day to become better Kuman citizens and speakers for the sake of delivering to them a clear message of everything God has done through Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, it’s apparently super easy for me to feel down from time to time about my progress. I really want to sound like them when I talk, think like them when we brainstorm, and feel like them when something big happens, but every moment in the village it’s painfully obvious that I’m lightyears from that point. The truth is, we’ll probably NEVER get all the way there. Yeah, we’ll be far enough along to communicate God’s truth through the grid of their worldview, but we’ll still stick out like sore thumbs.

Missionaries who’ve been in previously unreached tribes for decades have told us that there are many moments in their ministry when their friends are conversing about something about the culture and the veteran still has no clue what they’re talking about. After all those years, with all those relationships built and all that trust earned, still they feel like outsiders.

But here’s what’s beautiful, nay, majestic:

Send one of Christ’s people to hear the most noted preacher of the age, whoever that may be; he preaches a very learned sermon, very fine and magnificent, but there is not a word about Christ in that sermon. Suppose that to be the case, and the Christian man will go out and say, “I did not care a farthing for that man’s discourse.” Why? “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. I heard nothing about Christ.”

C.H. Spurgeon continues:

Send that man on the Sabbath morning to hear some hedge and ditch preacher, some one who cuts the king’s English about never so badly, but who preaches Jesus Christ-you will see the tears rolling down that man’s face, and when he comes out he will say, “I do not like that man’s bad grammar; I do not like the many mistakes he has made, but oh! it has done my heart good, for he spoke about Christ.” That, after all, is the main thing for the Christian; he wants to hear about his Lord, and if he hears him magnified he will overlook a hundred faults.

Oh, brothers and sisters, see it?! If Kuman hear us speak the Words of God, walk away and say, “Wow, his Kuman is perfect! We should hear him again,” we’ve utterly failed in God’s eyes. But if, even in our frailty of speech and demeanor, Christ is seen as He is, precious, our reward will be reaped.

Please pray for us, as well as the Kuman, that Christ might be cherished more than anything this world has to give.